Mad Matter
by OxymoronProne
Summary: Every once in a while, history leeches into the air and into the people, and if you listen hard enough sometimes you can hear it. What the history tells Harry about Draco Malfoy makes him listen harder. [Ambient magic, spellcasting, Cafe AU, Epilogue Noncompliant]
1. Private White Peacock

**A/N: hey so**

 **what is this**

 **oops**

 **sorry**

 **sorry for springing this on you like this**

 **i have no idea what this is or what it could be**

 **so just let it speak**

 **and maybe it'll speak to me again sometime soon and I'll be able to listen to it and put some more down**

 **love you**

 **bye**

 **-oxy**

* * *

Very few things are made up of only one other thing - many things are several things or more, all at once.

There is only so much matter in the universe, and one cannot create something out of nothing with this principle in place.

Everything you use was once something else, and that something else holds history.

Every once in a while, that history leeches into the air and into the people, and if you listen hard enough sometimes you can hear it.

The bricks, magnificent and pale and stained with old smoke, resonated with something sad and prestigious. Echoes of incredible bravery and incredible cowardice - the essence of a last stand, perhaps, or a first collapse.

 _Take chances while you have them_ , thought the bricks.

 _Not too close to the sun, Icarus_ , thought the front door.

 _I hope they really enjoy this one_ , thought the piemaker.

 _That's a lot of pressure,_ thought the pie.

Sometimes the piemaker was a piemaker, and sometimes he was a coffee-maker. Sometimes he was both at once, sometimes he was neither.

He wasn't necessarily tall or short, but he seemed to tower over his surroundings and be dwarfed by them all at once.

The bell on the front door jingled loudly, and the piemaker ignored it.

"Excuse me?"

The piemaker turned, inky black ponytail swishing behind him.

"Yes, how can I help you?"

The customer tapped her long, pink nails on the countertop where the fresh pie sat, "Two slices of whatever is fresh, to go, with two small black coffees."

 _Plasticine bubblegum tomahawk_ , thought the countertop.

"Coming right up," the piemaker, now the coffee-maker, replied amiably.

 _Being afraid to fly is only being afraid of landing,_ the bricks thought.

The bell on the door jingled again, and kept jingling, and the piemaker and coffee-maker filled and continued filling orders while being battered by the observations of his surroundings.

The last customer of the morning rush left after paying, identified by the cash drawer as _leafy molasses hand grenade,_ and the pie-coffee-maker set to bringing fresh products from his oven.

The bell jingled during a dip in customer flow, and the piemaker raised a brow at the unusual timing.

 _Tarnished silver serpent,_ warned the flagstones in the entryway, and the piemaker listened harder than before.

"Potter," the man with the long, silvery-blonde hair greeted, "I heard you'd opened up shop here."

The supply closet said _fresh parchment to write on._

"Malfoy," the piemaker returned easily, settling on an open and unthreatening expression, "Can I help you?"

Malfoy's face grew pinched, as if he'd been looking for a different reaction, "Coffee, black."

There was a moment where Malfoy's hand rested on the countertop, and the countertop thought very hard at the coffee-maker _grandfather clock missing a winding key._

The blonde turned and left, and the coffee-maker was neither a coffee-maker nor a piemaker for several more minutes.

 _Dull green flute_ , said the bell on the door when customers started filing in for the lunch rush.

 _And what a lackluster melody it plays,_ thought the coffee-maker.

* * *

 _Broken clockwork snake,_ said the flagstones the next day, and the piemaker was intrigued at the change.

"Potter," said the former snake.

"Malfoy," replied the piemaker.

"Coffee, black. And a slice of whatever isn't too sweet."

"Of course," the piemaker elegantly spun into motion, slicing this and pouring that, assuming correctly that the items were to go and placing them on the countertop. The piemaker said nothing else but the price of the items, something that Malfoy apparently found odd.

Malfoy seemed cautious, "You aren't curious?"

The piemaker didn't need to ask about the context of Malfoy's question; he already knew it.

 _Private white peacock,_ said the countertop, something that the piemaker also knew already.

"It's none of my business," the piemaker replied gently, making change for Malfoy's payment nimbly and handing him back a smattering of coins.

"Th-that's right," Malfoy said and then startled, as if frightened by the volume of his own voice.

Malfoy stowed his change and left in a flourish of expensive-looking fabric and immaculate hair.

 _Unhinged pewter music box,_ said the flagstones to the piemaker when Malfoy passed over them again.

 _Polish what was tarnished. Rewind the grandfather clock. Place the lid back on its hinges,_ thought Harry Potter.

 _Once a hero, always a hero,_ replied the countertop.

 _Mauve tombstones on a verdant day,_ interjected the cash box.

 _A first stand, not a last stand,_ projected the quiet courage of the bricks taken from a ruined castle in the Scottish countryside.

 _Fix, fix, fix, what is broken,_ said the Deathstick in Harry Potter's boot, _before something else becomes necessary._

 _I'll consider it,_ the piemaker allowed, and began to make more pies.


	2. Lampless Lamp Post

Harry Potter's home was a great deal quieter than his cafe, partly due to the things it was made of and partly due to the fact that there weren't people constantly traipsing in and out of it.

The Deathstick still nagged at him no matter where he was though it, too, was more muted in Harry's home. Perhaps it noticed that Harry wished to be left alone.

Alone was a thing that Harry found to be quite precious, nowadays. The cafe was noisy and crowded, and as a place where Harry spent a large amount of his time, it sapped his energy significantly. Maybe any job would do the same thing, but Harry had a feeling he wouldn't know.

Still, Harry had obligations to meet, and so he threw a handful of Floo powder into the fireplace and called upon his friends.

"Harry!"

"Hermione, Ron," Harry greeted with a mild smile.

"How've you been? We just got this beautiful crib…"

 _A new crib for a new child,_ said the Deathstick, and then there was the broad ringing of a church bell running through Harry's head. A celebration.

Or perhaps a lament.

* * *

Malfoy came in every day that Harry's cafe was open, whether the weather be cold or hot.

 _Weather the weather whether he likes it or not,_ smartly concluded the coat rack at the entrance of the shop.

 _Cracked metal swan,_ mentioned the flagstones.

 _Tuneless crooked lamp,_ countered the countertop.

Malfoy stuck around one day after ordering and paying to watch the piemaker lay raw pie dough on top of what would become an apple pie.

"Why cook the muggle way?" Malfoy demanded after a moment of observing Harry cut out stripes of dough to lay them in a crossing pattern.

"It's relaxing. Magic finishes things too fast for you to enjoy them, sometimes - leaves you too much time to think."

Harry didn't specify exactly what it was he thought about, and didn't feel the need to because the bricks of the opposite wall did it for him.

Malfoy didn't seem to know how to respond to this. He huffed, turned, and left.

 _Corroded black rapier,_ the flagstones thought.

* * *

The next day, Malfoy leaned on the counter with the glass case with all the pastries, an odd gleam in his pale eyes.

"Why have the shop _here_?"

"Originally? I didn't want anyone from Magical Britain to bother me. Now? I've just grown to like it."

Malfoy sneered and walked out.

 _Bottled shattered hourglasses_ , the counter commented.

* * *

Many of the interactions between Malfoy and Harry went this way. Harry would answer a question and then Malfoy would find something less than satisfactory with that answer and would leave in rush.

The flagstones and the counter and the bricks muttered gently at Harry things that sometimes sounded like improvements and sometimes sounded like the opposite. The supply closet and cash drawer would interject with things that either weren't helpful or were just undecipherable; _electronic gray vitamin_ and _vindicated calendar coulis_ come to mind. So, there was a lot of sorting through the stones to find the gems.

Gems, though, some of them definitely were; _mangled chimera_ and _weathered stone_ were among some of the better ones. Harry could work with those ones.

 _Darkness falls on the past and the future stretches before you,_ said the Deathstick frequently.

It sounded equally optimistic and ominous.

* * *

Rain slammed against the wide windows and cold seeped through the courageous bricks, and it was only the combination of the fireplace roaring and the ovens constantly working that kept the shop habitable.

Customers were few and far in between, likely due to the storm, when Malfoy burst through the front door and took a cursory glance around before drying himself off with a flick of his wand.

"What'll it be today?" Harry asked.

"Coffee, black."

Malfoy didn't always order food along with his coffee, but he always ordered coffee.

This time, after he paid for his drink and got his change back, he didn't engage Harry any further but sat down at one of the three tables the shop had to offer and stared out at the raging storm.

 _A lamp-post, missing its lamp,_ said the bricks in a surprising moment of clarity.

The piemaker stopped in his tracks as he was removing a fresh pastry from the oven, his brows furrowing.

 _How lonely,_ thought Harry, _to be alone and without a way to see it. To be alone and without the means to fix it._

So Harry put the pie on the counter to cool and went and sat at Malfoy's table, staring at the wood surface for a moment before realizing Malfoy was staring at him in hopes of an explanation.

Harry felt much like a fish for a moment, his mouth opening and closing without any sounds emerging.

 _How can I help? What can I do? Are you okay?_ Harry wanted to ask.

What came out instead was, "Come over later and watch a movie?"

To Harry's intense surprise, there was no immediate rejection.

The Deathstick chortled in Harry's ear.


	3. Drip, Drip, Drip Goes the Clock

"You seem different," Malfoy said from Harry's couch.

"How so?"

"More wise. Less...excitable."

Harry considered this as the Deathstick guffawed in his general direction.

"Maybe it's from growth," said Harry, "Maybe it's from experience. Who knows?"

 _Maybe it's from all the dead friends,_ the Elder Wand mocked.

"You were planning on being an Auror, right?" Malfoy asked, ignoring the movie on the screen once more, "Why the cafe?"

"Tried it for a moment," Harry recalled, and tried not to wince when the remnants of tortured screams rang through his ears, "it didn't work out for me. So, cafe."

Malfoy paused to ponder this new information.

"Do you enjoy it?"

"It relaxes me. I keep busy enough."

Answering with a non-answer was a specialty of Harry's, of late. The less those around him knew, the less they could accuse him of.

 _Cracked, bloody, open,_ quipped the massive wood-burning oven in Harry's kitchen, _drip drip drip goes the clock and not one step closer to the end._

"Busy doesn't equate enjoyment," Malfoy protested mildly, logically.

 _Concern is unlike him,_ the Deathstick observed.

"Maybe not," Harry replied to both of them, and turned back to the movie.

* * *

The mark of the Deathly Hallows, burned into Harry's right forearm, never bothered him but for when danger was near.

That is precisely why it was so very concerning that the mark began to throb as he was laying an intricate lattice on top of a raspberry pie. Harry stifled a sigh and moved to wipe his hands off on the bar towel next to him before drawing the Deathstick.

Thankfully, the shop was empty.

Or, not empty, Harry gathered from the wavering light by the front door.

"Whoever you are," Harry began softly, "I would much prefer if my lovely shop escaped this conflict unharmed."

" _Crucio_!"

" _Protego_ ," Harry countered easily. The silvery shield was destroyed seconds after contact, but Harry knew exactly where the curse had come from. He pointed his wand sharply and exclaimed, " _Impedimenta_!"

There was a muffled curse and a loud thud of someone falling to the stone floor.

" _Finite_ ," Harry continued, " _Expelliarmus_."

A tan wand found its way into Harry's left hand, and all of a sudden there was a dirty-looking man on the floor of the cafe.

"Any chance I'll get out of you why you decided to ambush me at my place of business?" Harry asked gently, not expecting much.

"You'll BURN for what you did! Filthy mudblood _scum_!" Spat the ragged man through blackened teeth.

Harry sighed. Another crazed zealot just threatening his life.

 _Mundane_ , complained the wooden rod.

" _Stupefy_ ," the piemaker replied calmly, and watched the man's head crack against the pale floor as he fell into unconsciousness.

It was exceedingly inconvenient that Harry later had to contact the Auror Department and have the strange man retrieved from his cafe. The shop wound up being closed the rest of the day, much to the displeasure of a certain blonde.

* * *

"I have nightmares too, you know," Draco said out of the blue. He lay casually on Harry's couch, one leg thrown over the back and both hands resting on his stomach.

Harry raised a brow, "What brought this up?"

"You look tired, and sad."

"Plenty of reasons for that, Draco."

"Maybe. Nightmares are okay, sometimes."

"Maybe."

There was a very long, long silence before Harry managed to continue his thought.

"Some of the stones in the shop - I took them from Hogwarts after the battle because I never wanted to forget what happened there that day," Harry admitted.

Draco turned concerned eyes on him.

 _Sometimes I can hear them screaming,_ Harry wanted to say. _Sometimes I can hear them dying. Sometimes I can feel the Killing Curse burning into my skin._

"Sometimes the things around me whisper things to me," Harry said instead, "It would be too distracting to work through if I were an Auror."

Harry sipped at his coffee and turned his attention back to his book, ignoring Draco's stare as long as he could manage it.

 _A lion dodging a snake,_ commented the roof over Harry's head.

Harry fought to hide a grimace.


	4. Lime and Chocolate Do Not Go Together

Draco came into the shop and hung out at Harry's place on a very regular basis. Draco claimed he only came into the shop because Harry's pies were possessed of a good balance of flavor - they weren't too sweet for the blonde.

"Sometimes you look really far away," observed Draco.

"Yeah?" Harry wondered aloud while he brewed some more coffee at the machine.

"Is it because you're _listening_?" Draco asked.

"Sometimes," Harry admitted, and handed Draco his coffee. "Sometimes I'm just thinking, though."

Draco scoffed a little and left soon after that, and Harry bit back a fond smile.

Draco rejoined Harry in Harry's home soon after the cafe closed, anyway.

* * *

The two were not-watching another movie, Harry easily providing half-answers to Draco's questions. They sat on the couch together - Harry at one end and Draco at the other, though the blonde looked so exhausted he was slouching further down into the seat cushions with every passing moment.

Harry wondered casually whether Draco had anything better to do than spend time at Harry's house.

 _Wouldn't count on it,_ said the Deathstick from its place in Harry's right sleeve, _His family was the closest to that disaster of Soul Magic and idiocy._

The Malfoys had been the ones to play host to Voldemort and his posse - Harry winced to remember Malfoy Manor's marble flooring and Hermione's shrieks bouncing around endlessly in the empty hall. Harry couldn't claim to know the true extent of the Malfoy's assistance to Voldemort, but he imagined it wasn't small enough to be passed over.

Lucius Malfoy had been sentenced to life in Azkaban for his crimes against humanity - this was one fate that couldn't be helped, in Harry's mind. Narcissa and Draco, however, had been spared jail time on the conditions of probation and heavy fines to be paid for their contributions to the war.

Harry had personally spoken at both of their trials - it was then that Harry revealed what Narcissa had done for him in the Forbidden Forest, and his opinion that Draco had been under such immense pressure from the authorities in his life that he shouldn't be held completely accountable for his actions.

Narcissa had thanked him, after. Draco had said nothing, but had nodded in what might be considered an acknowledgement of Harry's effort to keep him and his mother out of prison.

 _A snake can seem so much like a lion,_ mused Harry as he remembered the ferocity of Narcissa's protection of Draco.

His eyebrows scrunched together in the middle of his forehead when he realized that Draco had fallen asleep on his couch, feet stretched out and lying in Harry's lap.

The young man seemed so comfortable and tired that Harry didn't bother waking him up. He gently moved the blonde's feet off of his lap so he could stand, threw a blanket over him, and went to the kitchen to begin making dinner for the two of them.

Harry wondered why Draco was always so tired.

He wondered what Draco was running from.

He forced down the piece of himself that was deliriously happy about the fact that Draco found Harry to be a person he could run to.

* * *

 _Rock salt lamp,_ observed the countertop.

 _Dull nail-file,_ protested the cash drawer.

Harry ignored this, of course, until -

 _Bloodied worn dagger,_ warned the flagstones, and -

 _Finally, some real excitement,_ the Deathstick interjected while the mark on Harry's arm flared in pain.

It wasn't the same kind of pain as it was when Harry apprehended the former Death Eater in the middle of the day - this was more urgent. It burned and throbbed and radiated agony up Harry's arm in a way he couldn't mistake for anything else.

Nott.

Theodore Nott stood in Harry's cafe.

And all of a sudden it was years ago and Harry was out on his first mission as an Auror and he was watching Nott flay some poor muggleborn girl alive.

 _"Help me!"_

 _"Potter. Fancy seeing you here."_

 _"Nott! Put down your wand and back away!"_

 _"I-I c-cant-t see…!"_

Energy clusters around those who are about to kill, _interjected a voice from nowhere. Harry searched wildly for its source and couldn't find it._

 _That was when he noticed Nott smiling a cruel smile and raising his wand once more._

 _"Nott, don't you dare!"_

 _"_ Avada Kedavra _!"_

The plate Harry had been holding crashed to the floor.

 _One can never truly leave the pride_ , mentioned the white stones.

 _Mistakes follow us wherever we go_ , added the countertop.

 _Lime and chocolate do not go together,_ observed the cash box.


	5. Red Sky in the Morning

**A/N: 'sup.**

 **-oxy**

* * *

 _Nail polish posters,_ chirped the supply closet.

Harry paid this no mind, and kept his eyes fixated on the advancing dark wizard in his cafe.

He decided to greet him as he would any other person walking into the shop.

"How can I help you?" Asked Harry mildly, and nodded at the shards of the plate he dropped to urge it to piece itself back together and join its brethren on the shelf.

"Long time, no see, Potter," Nott said as he moved toward the counter, "I never did get the chance to thank you for my scars," he continued, referencing the long line cutting down his left cheek.

"I didn't get the chance to thank you for mine," Harry replied, referencing the healed lacerations on his right arm and torso.

* * *

 _"Why, Nott?!"_

 _"Indeed, Potter._ _Sectumsempra_ _!"_

 _"_ _Diffindo_ _!"_

 _"You'll pay for that, Potter!_ _Cru_ _\- "_

 _"Potter!_ _Protego_ _!"_

 _Harry watched from the ground as Nott's expression soured further at the arrival of the other Aurors and he turned on his heel to escape._

 _Harry murmured the counter-curse with his wand pointed at his own chest, mused briefly on the water-like nature of blood, and then the world went dark._

* * *

"I heard some interesting rumors that Draco Malfoy hangs around here," Nott mentioned and glanced around the room, taking in the cozy fireplace and cushioned armchairs and pale, smoke-stained stone.

"That is an interesting rumor," Harry allowed. He was proud when his voice didn't shake. His arm burned and the Elder Wand vibrated.

"I wondered if you could tell me where to find him," Nott said, casting his eyes back to Harry's face.

"I wonder why you have the need to know," Harry countered easily, but not harshly. He wanted to escape this encounter with his shop unharmed - he did not want to fight with his former classmate, not in this space.

"Loyalty?" Nott asked incredulously, "To a man you once considered an enemy?"

"I see no such implication in my phrasing," Harry denied.

Nott's mouth twisted in a sharp grimace and then smoothed again, and he approached the counter to gaze at the piemaker.

"Potter," Nott implored, smooth a silk, "my need to know where Malfoy is is none of your business. It has nothing to do with you or with this lovely little cafe of yours. Just tell me where he's hiding, and everything that happened way back when will be water under the bridge."

Draco hid in Harry's house. He ate dinner there sometimes and fell asleep on Harry's comfy couch. He battered Harry with questions that Harry never completely answered. He scoffed at Harry when Harry made jokes. He watched movies and read books and sometimes deigned to discuss the deeper themes of flicks and novels with Harry.

Draco hid the last place anyone like Nott would think to look, except now Nott was looking.

Harry wondered whether Nott was what Draco had been running from, and tried to crush the niggling piece of his brain that considered the possibility that Draco had been using him the whole time.

"To my knowledge," Harry finally replied to Nott's pleading gaze, "Malfoy was last in Russia."

Nott seemed to force down a grin if the twitching of his lips said anything.

"My thanks, Potter," Nott replied, tipped an imaginary hat, and then left the shop in a swirl of malice and magic.

Something like the smell of rotting lilies rushed into Harry's nose.

 _Red sky in the morning,_ commented the flagstones lowly.

 _Nothing quite like the echoes of Death,_ muttered the Elder Wand.

 _Indigo socks and neon clocks keep an eye on the vanilla dryer sheets,_ solemnly declared the cash box.

* * *

Harry hadn't technically lied to Nott in the shop - Draco had mentioned that he needed to pop over to Moscow for an afternoon to square away something. He had then assured Harry that he would be back the same day because Harry was making risotto for dinner and he didn't want to miss that.

So when Harry was in the middle of plating the dish and Draco wandered into the house, still in his cold-weather attire from his overseas adventure, Harry was not only relieved to see him in one piece but also itching to explain what had occurred in the middle of his cafe that day.

"I had a curious visitor today in the shop," Harry mentioned as he set a plate in front of Draco where he sat at the kitchen table.

"Hmm?" Draco mumbled, mouth already full of risotto. He cast his silvery eyes up at Harry curiously.

Harry was kind enough to wait for him to finish his mouthful before continuing for fear of the ensuing cleanup.

"Theodore Nott came in, and asked after you," said Harry.

The way that Draco stiffened immediately and scanned what exposed parts of Harry's skin he could see for injury told Harry that Nott was _definitely_ what Draco had been running from.

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him that to my knowledge, you were in Russia," at Draco's near-outraged expression, Harry hastily continued, "I didn't specify that you were coming back tonight, nor that you and I have been acting amicably around each other for the past few months. He is convinced that the only reason I hesitated in giving your location is that I still have a hero complex," he concluded and poured two glasses of firewhisky.

Even after downing the whole thing in one go, Draco still appeared as if he wanted to bolt from the table and hide somewhere.

"There's a reason this place is under the Fidelius charm, you know," Harry reminded the blonde gently, and watched a little bit of the tension melt out of Draco's shoulders. "I don't know what he'll do to my shop or my person when he realizes that you're not in Russia. It was a quick fix and nothing more."

"Thank you," Draco said sincerely and quietly around a sip of his second glass of firewhisky, "for not giving me away."

Harry couldn't keep the words out of his mouth, apparently.

"I had a thought, earlier, when Nott was in my cafe," Harry declared.

Draco raised a thin brow, "Go on?"

"Well, he came looking for you, didn't he? He was willing to look over our...shared past to get to you and presumably murder you. And you've been so tired and you spend so much time here, and I had a thought when Nott was in my shop - Draco, I need a serious and honest answer from you on this - I wondered if there was a possibility you'd been using me as a place to hide from him."

Draco frowned and stared down at his plate for a long moment.

"I...maybe, at first," Draco began slowly, "I'll admit that much. I figured he'd never come to you to find me, that's for sure. Only at first, though. Now…"

"Now?"

"Now...I don't know."

Harry threw back his glass of firewhisky and set it down a little too hard on the table, upside-down. His plate, untouched, hovered over to the sink and set itself gently into the metal base.

Harry didn't find himself to be hungry at all anymore.

"I'll be in my room," Harry said, and as he was preparing to leave the kitchen, he turned back to Draco, whose eyes seemed unnaturally damp, "And if you want, you can stay in the guest bedroom until this Nott thing is dealt with."

Then he turned and left, and climbed the staircase to reach his bedroom, growing angrier while also being unsure how he should feel.

 _Hell hath no fury,_ mocked the Deathstick.

Harry considered snapping it in half, again.


	6. One Continues to Stand Up

The Nott thing wasn't dealt with in time.

It took a little over a week for Nott to realize that Draco wasn't in Russia, and hadn't been in Russia for a long while.

In all honesty, Harry should've expected something like this, though he doubted that any enchantment he would be able to come up with couldn't have prevented it in the first place.

There was every possibility that this could have occurred even without the addition of Draco Malfoy's company to Harry's life.

Nott could've found Harry's cafe out of a simple desire for vengeance following their interaction back when Harry was an Auror.

Harry tried to tell himself that this wasn't necessarily Draco's fault, but the notion was the one that Harry's mind kept circling back to as he sat on the curb across the street from his cafe and watched muggle firefighters desperately try to keep the blaze from spreading to adjacent buildings.

Fiendfyre didn't behave like normal fire - it wouldn't stop until it consumed what it was set upon. This work of elemental magic wouldn't be satisfied until every last stone was gone.

Smoke climbed into the sky and the flames spat ash and embers and there had been a point earlier where the firefighters had given up on trying to put the thing out.

In any case, Harry sat and stared at the flames, and he listened.

He wanted to hear the last words of every piece of his cafe, from the flagstones to the bricks to the cash box. To the credit of all the things that spoke to Harry, none of them were afraid as they met their ends.

 _Ends are beginnings and beginnings are ends,_ said the front door.

 _If fear and hatred are all you put into the world, they are all you will receive,_ said the flagstones.

 _The real world is rarely as neat as in storybooks,_ said the countertop.

Harry listened to his constant companions surrendering to raging fire.

Harry listened long into the morning, when the sun began to set the clouds alight and the world around him began to wake from its slumber.

The very last smoldering pieces of the bricks from a long-ago battle threw words into Harry's head with the same quiet courage and determination that he had admired since he'd first placed them into the walls.

 _A first stand or a last stand - it does not matter and will not matter. All that matters is that one continues to stand up._

Then, the last bricks gave up to the grave and their presence was gone from Harry's awareness.

Tears dripped down Harry's face and onto the pavement as he mourned what had been a part of his life.

The Deathstick was mercifully silent, though Harry knew what it would have said if it truly wanted to.

 _I told you so._

* * *

Harry returned home and made his way straight for his room after shucking off his jacket and leaving his shoes at the front door.

Now, his house was much too quiet for his liking.

Draco caught him by the stairs and tried to speak to him - he opened his mouth as if he was going to engage Harry in conversation - but Harry held a hand up to him and slowly shook his head. Something in Harry's expression kept Draco from pressing any further, and the blonde let Harry escape up the stairs.

The lion immediately collapsed on his bed and stared up at the ceiling until unconsciousness claimed him some time later.

* * *

Draco didn't claim to be a _good_ person.

At any given moment of the day, Draco's first thought related to himself and his own continued survival and livelihood, though he would assume that any person on the planet would think in a similar manner.

Draco had an inherent distaste for good people - selfless people who threw themselves in harm's way to protect perfect strangers, people who did good deeds and asked for nothing in return, people who denied power and disliked fame.

People like Harry Potter.

People like Harry Potter garnered admiration wherever they went. Ordinary citizens knew his name and thought about him as a hero or a savior.

For the longest time, Draco thought that Harry Potter's selflessness and acts of kindness were all fake. Draco thought that Harry Potter was the biggest con artist of them all, tricking everyone around him into believing that he was good.

And then, after the Battle of Hogwarts when Draco and his mother were dragged before the Wizengamot for their trials, Harry Potter had been called as a witness and had testified for both of them.

Harry Potter was the reason that Draco and Narcissa didn't receive life sentences in Azkaban along with Draco's father, and Harry never sought to call in a favor in repayment. He completely dropped off the grid a year following the conclusion of the trials.

Draco kept expecting Potter to demand payment. He kept expecting Potter to drop out of the sky one day and demand Draco's resources or time, and he never did.

Potter, according to a muggle directory, opened a cafe in the middle of muggle London and did nothing with magic and had nothing to do with magical people anymore.

And when Draco began hearing rumors that Theodore Nott was looking for him, he knew he had to leave wizarding Britain and hide until the Aurors could put him behind bars. Draco didn't particularly know what the grudge Nott had against him was, nor did he really care.

Draco hid where Nott wouldn't think to look for him - right next to the classmate Draco had hated the most and in a place Draco openly despised. Harry Potter's cafe in muggle London was the best hiding spot Draco knew of.

And then Harry Potter had done him one better, and had let him hide in his house, too.

For a short while, Draco had hated Harry Potter. He hated his saccharine shtick, his kindness, his selflessness. Draco couldn't find fault with Harry Potter, and he hated it because everyone Draco had ever interacted with had an ulterior motive and a sinister agenda.

Draco hated Harry Potter because Harry had found some piece of _something_ from _somewhere_ that made him _whole_ and _genuine_ , and Draco didn't know what it was or how to find it for himself.

For a short while, Draco hated Harry Potter and was more than happy to pretend to be his friend, because it seemed like that was all Harry was out for.

But there was a quiet evening once, when Draco had let his guard down and had fallen asleep for the first time in Harry's living room. When he woke up there was a warm blanket draped over him and a mug of tea set out for him on the coffee table with a stasis charm set on it. He'd peered over at Harry, who had fallen asleep in an armchair.

Harry Potter, in sleep, looked quite small and innocent and peaceful. Draco didn't know how he'd missed it, really, but Harry Potter was quite beautiful, somehow. The _idea_ of Harry Potter, as adverse to it as he'd been at the start, was beautiful, too.

At some point, Draco's pretending to be Harry's friend turned into actually being his friend.

Even when Harry found out Draco's play of using him for protection, Harry didn't immediately kick him out of his house. Harry, again, didn't demand payment.

Harry offered to let him live in his house until Theodore Nott was no longer a threat to his life.

Interactions between Draco and Harry were terse, more often than not, but Draco still found himself in awe of Harry's poise and composure. Draco avoided his host and waited for the other shoe to drop.

Then, when Harry fled from his home in a panic early one morning because something was wrong at the cafe and demanded that Draco stay inside so he would be safe, Draco knew that the worst had happened.

Harry returned and wouldn't speak to Draco at all, his eyes tired and bloodshot and tear tracks all over his cheeks.

For the first time since the war, Draco felt like the lowest piece of scum the Earth had to offer.

Draco didn't claim to be a good person and he never would.

But he did know that this was his fault, all of it, and he had to do something to fix it.


	7. And This One Stands Here (Frying Eggs)

**A/N: jeepers creepers my dudes it's been a long time since we've been here, huh? sorry lol i think i died a couple times but i got a 4.0 gpa this summer so was it worth it? (probs not in the long run but idk)**

 **love you all pls enjoy**

 **-oxy**

* * *

Maybe Draco Malfoy was a bad person, and maybe he was suffering from the complex desire to be a good person while retaining his self-image, but he definitely was not an idiot.

Going after Nott all by himself while Harry slept and likely cried by himself in his room would be an idiotic move, especially while he was so worked up. He would be sloppy and careless with his spellcasting and dodging, so fighting Nott one-on-one in his state would be stupid. And as previously stated, Draco Malfoy was not an idiot.

Or, thought Draco while considering what he'd done and how badly he'd hurt Harry, maybe he _was_ an idiot, but not _that_ kind of idiot.

So he didn't go after Nott, and he didn't leave the house because after what had been done to Harry's cafe - Draco's life was definitely in danger of being ended if he stepped outside. That means Draco could die after all that Harry had done and suffered through to keep him safe and well, that just wouldn't do, would it?

Instead of being stupid, Draco tied his hair back and stepped to the formidable stove and hoped beyond all hope that he could remember how to cook food.

 _The clock drips onward and the eleventh hour approaches like a mist over the hills, and this one stands here, frying eggs,_ drawled the wood-burning oven.

This quip went unanswered, because nobody could hear it.

At the stove, Draco struggled to toast some bread.

* * *

Existence is something that we take for granted while we have it. The existence of things that we use or interact with is also something we take for granted while we have it.

Harry shuddered, remembering the sudden emptiness in his head. There was a gaping maw in his chest and he curled tighter into a ball on his bed to keep it from getting any bigger. If a small whimper escaped him, there was nobody around to hear it.

The Deathstick was silent.

His house was silent.

The silence was so much more distracting than the noise had been, in a much more destructive way than Harry could ever have imagined.

The person at his door was only mildly more distracting than the silence.

There were three light knocks and then a timid voice calling out his name.

The man who was now a man and no longer a pie or coffee-maker, and may never be either one again, tilted his head to the ceiling and wondered whether he should let Draco into his room.

 _All that matters is that one continues to stand up._

So Harry stood and made his way to his door and found Draco Malfoy covered in all manners of oil and flour and holding a plate of immaculately-prepared breakfast.

"You were right," Draco said without preamble, "about preparing food without using magic, I mean. It took my mind off of everything for a few minutes but then on the walk up here I remembered it all, and I'm wondering if…"

Draco's speech dropped off just a little bit and Harry had trouble understanding him through his somewhat muddled brain.

"If..?" Harry asked.

"If you could ever forgive me," Draco repeated, with all the countenance of a lonely child.

Beyond the lamppost, the shattered hourglass, the rapiers and the serpents, Harry Potter saw the pale-haired, pale-eyed human being before him and could think of nothing but an only child running through a big, empty house surrounded by everything he could ever want and nothing he needed.

 _I think I can forgive you even though you really, really hurt me. I can understand your experience and I know that you had nobody so you don't know how to deal with having somebody. I'm very upset, though, and right now I don't want apologies - I just want comfort,_ Harry wanted so badly to say.

"Can I have a hug?" Was what Harry managed to say instead.

 _Being afraid to fly is only being afraid of landing,_ the Elder Wand reminded gently in the words of those old, courageous bricks. _Take chances while you have them._

He felt very raw, and very exposed, and was thankful when Draco set the plate of food on the floor and folded him gently in his arms.

The loss of his cafe crashed into him again and he was shaking and crying again, dehydrated and overwhelmed. His eyes burned. His throat burned. This time, though, the hole in his chest didn't feel quite so big.

If Draco minded the tears soaking through his shirt or Harry holding onto him too tightly, he didn't say. He very simply sat the two of them down on Harry's bed and drew tiny, comforting circles on Harry's back to try and quell the trembling.

At some point, Harry fell asleep again and under his ear was the comforting thud of Draco's pulse, and the silence wasn't silence anymore.


End file.
